http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12054/1212035-150.stm#ixzz1nEakfvYJ

Collier: Baseball’s post-steroids era is tough to swallow

Thursday, February 23, 2012

By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Depending on whether you started the clock in 2003, when Major League Baseball began testing for performance-enhancing drugs, or in ‘05, when it actually started suspending its cheaters, the approaching baseball season is either year seven or year nine of what baseball loves to call its post-steroids era.

Really.

You gotta be careful how you label these things, boys.

Looks like that post-steroids era label desperately needed some fine print after all:

Do not take internally. 

That’s legalese for “you’re not about to swallow that are ya?”

Make no mistake, I wanted to ingest it as much or more than anyone, but the spring training at hand is virtually screaming with caution.

You almost had to laugh last weekend when the Commissioner of Baseball pondered the issue of whether the Pirates should be allowed to trade for A.J. Burnett, given the rejiggered salary models agreed upon with the New York Yankees, while he simultaneously demurred on the matter of two-time drug offender Manny Ramirez being pursued and signed by the Oakland A’s.

Perhaps Bud Selig simply didn’t want to mess with Billy Beane’s Oscar buzz.

Beane went from modestly successful baseball metrics alchemist to full-blown Hollywood hero on the crest of the ‘11 film “Moneyball,” a pretty good movie that, while terribly out of place among the nominees for Best Picture Sunday, is nowhere near as out of place as Manny Ramirez in anybody’s baseball uniform in the post-steroids era.

Baseball not only had no issue with the A’s signing Manny to a minor league contract, it agreed with the players’ union that, since Manny spent almost all of ‘11 in “retirement” rather than serve a 100-game suspension, his second in two years, his sentence should be reduced to 50 games this time around.

Seriously.

Amnesty for steroid cheats in the post-steroid era.

Manny might never get another big league at-bat, obviously. He’ll be 40 in May as his suspension plays out, and the A’s are betting $500,000 that he’s not the same Manny who went 1 for 17 until retiring from the Tampa Bay Rays last spring or the same Manny who had one homer in 88 at-bats for the Chicago White Sox the year before.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that Ramirez is obviously at the baseball career stage once perfectly described to me as “finally learning to say hello just when it’s time to say good-bye,” and here we have a celebrated, spotlighted MLB franchise with zero compunctions about throwing half a million dollars in the spring of ‘12 at one of the faces that comprise the Mount Rushmore of the pre-post steroids era.

And that’s not even the big story out of spring training, which is the 50-game suspension for National League MVP Ryan Braun, scheduled to arrive any minute.

Unless the slugging Milwaukee Brewers left fielder somehow becomes the first major league player to successfully appeal a positive test (more than 30 others have failed since ‘05), baseball is going to start ‘12 with one of its biggest stars in steroids jail. Braun hit .332 last summer, and his power numbers -- 33 homers and 111 RBIs—were well short of the steroid-alarm range, but a urine test in the postseason plunged five years of offensive accomplishment into suspicion.

Braun’s ‘A’ sample showed elevated levels of testosterone, his ‘B’ sample did as well, indicating the ‘A’ sample had not been tampered with, and ESPN reported that the World Anti-Doping Agency in Montreal determined that the additional testosterone in Braun was “exogenous”—not from his own body.

Braun is due in camp Friday, unless arbitrator Shyam Das feels it’s prudent to save him the trip. The outfielder’s representatives have contended that Braun’s test implies “absolutely no intentional violation,” which is a weak PR swing in the face of the full knowledge that baseball doesn’t have to prove intent, just chemistry.

You almost don’t know what to hope for in Braun’s case.

If he gets slammed for 50 games, baseball can rightly portray itself as righteously unafraid to derail its biggest stars should they violate a drug policy it claims is the strictest in sport. If Braun wriggles free, the National League again presents one of its best talents for a full season, albeit a season thick with fan hectoring on the drug issue.

Braun has never retreated on the issue before this pickle. He was critical of Alex Rodriguez and others who’ve admitted using steroids, and, asked once by MLB.com if he’d ever been tempted to take performance enhancers, said, “It’s never something I sought.”

Hmmm.

I’d have preferred a “no, nay, never,” but, in a mysterious climate where baseball is welcoming back Manny Ramirez, that kind of warning-track denial will have to suffice.

http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_20024748#ixzz1nEMm9nPS

latimes.com/sports/la-sp-erskine-20120222,0,2039466.column

latimes.com

How do you want your new baseball glove: baked, steamed or wrapped?

There are tons of theories on how to break in a glove, but many hasten its demise. Experts and former pros weigh in on how to treat your glove the way it should be treated.

Chris Erskine

February 22, 2012

Welcome to this rite and ritual of an American spring, breaking in a new glove. As with anything in baseball, there are 100 views on the proper way to do this, all argued passionately.

Glove gurus, some more guru than others, recommend treating a stiff new glove as either your best friend or roadkill. You can drown a glove, you can bake it, you can run it over with the car.

Breaking in a baseball glove isn't science so much as a form of testosterone-fueled witchcraft.

Tony Pena, former major league backstop and current New York Yankees bench coach, reportedly goes ape on a new catcher's glove, turning it inside out, outside in, punching, prodding, mugging it into submission — it's almost hard to watch.

What Pena is doing is accelerating the wear and tear a glove would normally get, which is what all of the sometimes-sensible, often-bizarre tactics are attempting to do.

Among the most surreal approaches is cooking your new $300 glove like a piece of veal. Nuking a glove in the microwave, a commonplace tactic for rec league players, immediately softens it. But if you have metal grommets — sorry, Mom — it immediately ruins your microwave.

Others will warm a conventional oven to 350 degrees, then turn it off and insert the glove on a cookie sheet for 15 minutes — "when it smells like steak, it is done," goes the notion.

Chef beware: It also hastens the deterioration of the glove.

"When you put these things under extreme heat conditions, what happens is the leather fibers break down ... and once that's happened, it's ruined," says Michael Markovich of Wilson. "It will soften too much and the ball will pop right out."

It also, as Markovich points out, voids the warranty.

The pros take the opposite tactic. Angels equipment manager Keith Tarter says most players will dunk a glove in warm water for several minutes, place a ball or two in the pocket, then wrap an old athletic sock tight around it and let it hang for a couple of days to dry.

After that, they may oil it, or smear it with shaving cream (lanolin is the magic ingredient), then start shagging baseballs.

"Other guys will put the new glove on a carpeted surface so it doesn't scratch the back, take a bat and pound it like crazy," says Mariners assistant athletic trainer Rob Nodine. "They'll usually have two gloves, one they're using in games and one they're breaking in for the future."

"I've been doing this for over 40 years, and I know all about the dunking. The [inside] doesn't dry out right," says Paul Roberts of Landry's sporting goods in Montrose.

Roberts says that dunking may work well for pros, who get free gloves. But for rec league players who want to hang on to a glove for many seasons, dunking compromises the lacing and speeds up the deterioration.

Roberts' shop now recommends an increasingly popular tactic: steaming. This involves pounding out the glove with a mallet, applying conditioning oil, steaming the glove, then sealing it with Neet's Foot or another light oil.

"It shortens the break-in time by about 70%," he says of the process, which he dismissed initially but now swears by.

The steamers are a new rage in a business that doesn't change much. Only a generation or two ago, gloves didn't have deep pockets. The late 1950s was the first time that glove makers were able to build pockets that allowed players to make one-handed snags.

Since then there have also been advances in webbing and materials — composite backs, nylon stitching, plastic and Styrofoam fillers, none of it particularly beneficial to consumers.

"They don't make cows like they used to either," says Lee "The Gloveman" Chilton, who started rebuilding gloves in his Fremont, Calif., shop in the mid-1960s.

The legendary Chilton, sort of the Wolfman Jack of glove repair, says he could see a drop in leather quality in the late '60s, when he says cattlemen started moving from ranges to feedlots. He also saw glove makers insert plastic finger protection, which makes breaking in a glove more difficult (and heating it unwise).

"They don't use a quarter of the leather they used to," says Chilton, who also recommends against dunking because it causes mildew and dry rot.

To break in today's gloves, he suggests wetting a towel, then wringing it out and warming it in the microwave. Wrap the glove in the warm towel, creating an effect similar to the steaming.

"The rule of thumb is don't do anything to your glove that you wouldn't do to your best friend," advises Markovich of Wilson.

What Wilson recommends, and an approach similar to Chilton's, is this:

•Soak a cloth in the hottest tap water and thoroughly wipe down the glove.

•While still damp, form the pocket by playing catch with a friend — the more zing in his or her throw the better.

•Repeat this wet-and-catch process for five straight days.

•After it's dry on the fifth day, oil the glove completely.

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/sam_donnellon/20120221_Sam_Donnellon__Hamels_is_the_ultimate_homegrown_talent.html#ixzz1n2VkIJoi 

http://www.baseballamerica.com/online/prospects/rankings/top-100-prospects/2012/2613006.html

Looking Back At Previous Trios

Generally two of three make it, one falters

By J.J. Cooper
February 21, 2012

This isn’t the first time we’ve had a trio of prospects who all could make a great case for the top spot on the Top 100. A look back shows that when you have three “can’t miss” prospects, there’s a decent chance that one of them will miss. Here are some other notable trios from previous lists: